Exploring Innovation Through Copying - Essay Example

Exploring “Innovation” through “Copying” The need for innovative ideas and creative solutions in many societal paradigms is not a recent issue. More often than not, many people attach the concept of new ideas and innovative solutions because of a combination of complex mind bagging process that requires either confined solitude or scientific experiments. However, even with such the need for innovative and creative solutions, cannot be overemphasized in academic or business environments. In Ted.com talk, “Where good ideas come from?” Steven Johnson traces the journey of innovative and creative ideas to a coffee house, a common place where people would meet daily to have a cup of coffee as they interact and share freely about the happenings around them either consciously or unconsciously. The importance of good ideas cannot be overstated in today’s competitive environment. According Johnson, a coffee house is just a representative of the many social environments where people operate under minimal pressure yet create ideas that change how societies operate. The element of conversation according to Johnson is the pipeline through which ideas come from. Johnson goes beyond the mere mentioning of conversation as the origin of good ideas but also argues that the formation and actualization of a concrete idea is a slow examined process that is founded upon life experiences and interactions, in what he refers to as “liquid networks”. He traces this through the Darwinian slow ideas of evolution up to the development of high technological ideas and innovations that have been possible by the introduction of internet and World Wide Web. This process according to Johnson is a slow and long process. People gather this kind of information through the gathering of the little things that people do in life and finding out the shortcomings associated with a particular observed happening and slowly thinking how the issue can be solved. While supporting Johnson’s ideas of innovation and creativity in today’s competitive and dynamic landscape, Johanna Blakely, provides information on the concept of ownership of ideas and its implications for creativity and innovation. During her presentations in TED talk, Blakely relates the success witnessed in the fashion industry resulting from the concept of open platform concerning the sharing of information especially those concerning fashion creations and designs. According to her, the success of the industry is compounded by the fact that no one claims ownership of any idea in fashion creations but rather these creations are availed to all other designers so that they may improve on one’s creations and introduce it in the market where other players can also access it. The fashion industry does not have any copyright law for these ideas. The success in this approach presents high gross sales in sectors that have low IP protection as opposed to those bearing higher IP protection. Her reasoning here is that higher copyright protection offers little opportunity for growth in any industry. To add to this, she argues that economic incentives attached to property hinder cultural creations. Blakely puts it clear that the fashion industry players treat all its creations as a common that can be used by any person and transformed by others. To this, relates the growth of the fashion industry to Maxims as proposed by Isaac Newton, and concludes that within numerous creations and information available in the technological arena, the success stories from open fashion creation and lack of copyright can be applied to the digital arena. (Blakely) To her, the kind of ownership that makes sense in a digital world is an ownership model of open creation with no copyright protection for ideas and technologies to thrive from re-use and re-examination. This innovation is dependent on one’s ability to find a new way of doing something with the current technology or better still finding a new environment where the digital creation can be applied with little modification efforts. To this effect, other authors have suggested the dependence of ideas on other ideas and that no idea is isolated, and that innovation is built on innovation. It is for this that when technology creators are allowed an opportunity to evaluate and re-modify the creation of others, through a platform of public domain, fair utilization, and other approaches, and then there would be corresponding development of innovation. It appears therefore that such an explanation follows Johnson’s concept of “where good ideas come from?” The academic environment can be regarded as highly regulated and controlled social institution than any other known institution especially concerning creativity, sharing of information and copying. Largely, the academics view this controlled platform towards unearthing creativity and internal abilities bestowed upon a student without copying another person’s ideas but improving on the idea. It is no wonder that plagiarism as understood in this context is equated more with academic dishonesty and grave academic crime liable for prosecution. On one hand, students do not see information got from the internet as copying putting into sharp focus into what really plagiarism covers. Broadly understood, plagiarism in the academic sphere is one of the major issues that define good academic writing and differentiates a vague academic paper. Nevertheless, students fail to recognize the due need for working within the recognizable realism as to the importance of maintaining and producing plagiarized free paper in the academic environment. Generally agreed, maintaining a plagiarism free writing does not only guarantee that students become creative in the academic process, but it also consolidates and open up the unique research abilities and skills that students accumulate during the entire academic process (Kutz et al). At the same time, a plagiarized free paper brings out the academic honesty bestowed on each student and puts on the surface the unique ideological standpoints that are unique to each student. The access of academic materials by other aspiring researchers perhaps follows Blakely’s theories about innovation and creativity, and finding the right environments for such, Johnson Stephen examines the origin of ideas and creativity in the everyday societal set up. Johnson supports that creativity is best enhanced in the context of knowledge sharing and skills as ideas are only developed from other ideas. Many commentaries have suggested that Johnson’s perception of idea development should be useful in supporting and inspiring people towards the creation of knowledge and platforms that foster innovation, reflection, flexibility and knowledge accessibility. This kind of environment is only provided in the academic platform who have embraced Blakely’s concept of idea sharing so that students are able to learn from previous studies and build on these without making an exact duplicate of such. According to Blakely’s point of view, the fashion industry seems to be a vibrant societal business choice because creations by other industrial designers can easily be copied and produced by other designers. It has been suggested that this kind of accessibility to other designs by other interested designers creates more of cross-fertilization where ideas from different people are used to build superior designs. Similarly, today’s concept of innovation differs from the conventional and traditional view that advocates for a new creation that uniquely identifies a product or an idea. However, this traditional notion of innovation is today losing momentum as Blakely exposes how economic productivity in the fashion industry has experienced tremendous growth. It becomes important therefore, that through a collaborative process of reworking, networking or remodeling and already existing idea can indeed lead to innovation. When applied to academic environments, Blakely demonstrates quite clearly how the “copying culture” can upscale innovative culture. Such culture of copying has proved fruitful in various subject disciplines ranging from art, music, religion and philosophical studies when traced back to classical times. In reality, it implies that such an argument for copying culture makes innovation to be at the center of academic excellence. More than not, this kind of excellence has been witnessed more in the arts as well as science disciplines. For instance, the music field has been known to thrive over time because artists admit openly to be inspired by earlier artists or otherwise copied musical creations of earlier composers. The Bob Dylan article for instance gives specific quotes where Muddy Waters admits having been inspired by Robert Johnson on his song “Country Blues” (Kutz et al 17). In that article, Bob Dylan wrote that Waters claimed ownership of the song yet it had “already existed in other forms” (17) in relating Waters case, it has been suggested such a platform offered musicians an opportunity to express the musical qualities they had within themselves, and how such influences mold an idea into a unique style of one’s creation. Thus, it is no wonder nowadays that later musical compositions are viewed as copied ideas of earlier compositions. These songs however seem unique in their standing, making them an “innovation” that has been built on what had already been written by other people. Moreover, these creations seem to differ from earlier ones depending on one’s ability to “copy” so that such ideas to resemble original ideas as existed before or just created as an imitation of a pre-existing creation. Therefore seems to be a strong evidence to conclude that copying will inspire future musicians and used for opening the grounds for innovativeness in the musical arena. However, critics argue that copying is only limited to musical arena and cannot apply to other areas of study like essay writing in schools and colleges, though this seems to be untrue. For instance, Kutz et al argues that Lawrence Lessig informs us how Andy Warhol re-created new designs using pre-existing ideas that were not his original creations, which in Lessig’s own perspective, he refers to them as “distinctively Warhol” irrespective of the fact that they were based on earlier ideas. Lessig supports the form of coping as can be used in the academic environment thus borrowing heavily on Blakely’s ideas of fashion design and how lack of copyrights enable designers to examine other creations enabling them to modify them so that they come up with “distinct” ideas. In support of Muddy Waters concept of musical copying, Lussag makes the same argument for law and suggests, “Every creation is drawn from an earlier work that was done before, and presented as if the argument was completely new. The use of words in this case makes the point of things that the earlier creators did not directly address. The remix is meant to make something new.” (Kutz et al 19) The “culture of copying” as postulated by Blakely, is a sign of its health because it forces designers to “up their game” and spur them to “invent”. (Kutz et al 18) If information sharing is not made possible in the academic context, then perhaps today’s innovations could not have been made possible including Lessig’s “second use principle” in Matt Friedman’s “discovery of a missing link”. (18) In his own words, Johnson argues that “a new idea is a network of neurons firing with sync with each other inside one’s brains.” Quite often than not, one may be tempted to ask, “How do you get your brain in environments where these new networks are going to be more likely to form?” The response to the above question was later answered by Jonson in his article “The Genius of the Tinkerer,” concerning “adjacent possible” relating it to more of a mirror for the future that examines the state of present things and a road map for the future where the present can re-invent itself to capture the possibilities of “change and innovation”. (Johnson) Given the rigidity and the kind of creativity required in the academic discipline, there has been designed several strategies to help minimize plagiarism. Kutz et al suggests that these approaches aim at helping the learners recognize their rewards of the work with the kind of academic materials they use in their writing even at times when such undertakings involves making of mistakes. These strategies rather view writing as a process requiring time and due instruction in both the reading and writing activity. (24) Works cited Blakely, Johanna. Lessons from fashion’s free culture [video]. Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.ted.com/speakers/johanna_blakley.html. 2010 Johnson, Steven. "The Genius of the Tinkerer ." 25 September 2010. The Wall Street Journal. 15 December 2012 . Johnson, Steven. Where good ideas come from [Video]. Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_Johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html Kutz, Eleanor, et al. "Addressing Plagiarism in A Digital Age." Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of self Knowledge (2011): 15-36. Read More